Malvo Closing Argument
![handle is hein.journals/cjust19 and id is 75 raw text is: juve nfe Jutc
Robert E. Shepherd, Jr.
Malvo Closing Argument
NOTE: The./1lowing is an edited transcript ofthe
closing argument by defiense attorney Craig S. Cooley in
the December 2003 penalo' phase o/the capital murder
trial of/Lee Boyd Malvo, who, along with John Muham-
mad, ias responsible./br the sniper shootings that ter-
rori7ed the Washington, D.C., area in 2002. Malvo, who
was 17 at the time of the crime spree, was tried inl
Chesapeake, Virginia,./or a miiurder in Fair&v County.
Federal prosecutomr chose Viginia because it is ome q1
only 21 states that allows./hr the execution of/persons
who were juveniles when they committed their crimes.
Two other convemieint possible jurislictiois- Mom land
and the District o/ Cohmbia-do not. A jury.1/uncl Mal-
vo guilty 0/'capital miiurde; and sentenced him to li/e im-
prisonment iithout possibilitv of parole. At least one ju-
ror stated inl a CNN report that it was the impassioued
cosing 0/ft(enIse attorne Coole, that swayed a critical
number q/jurors to hold out against a death sentence.
May it please the court. For those of us who are par-
ents or grandparents, and certainly for those of you Who
are entrusted with schoolchildren ... now or in the past,
and those of you who have been entrusted with parish-
ioners, we all know that our greatest concern for our
children, our greatest worry, is Who our children will
come to associate with. And our worries are greatest not
when those children are nine, 10, and 11, or when they
are two, three, four, five, and six ... our greatest worries
are when they get to be 15, 16, and 17 because that's
the point in time where they begin to search for them-
selves. It's a time that makes them the most susceptible
to peer pressure and to outside influence. It is a point in
time where they are the most vulnerable.
The persons we are today ... who each of us is to-
day, is not of our making. It has much more to do with
those folks who helped to shape us. If we're fortunate,
really fortunate, we've had two parents, or at least one
loving parent, to nurture us, to protect us, to teach us,
and to be constants in our lives, both in their physical
presence and in their consistency.
We are shaped. There's no such thing as a self-
made man or a self-made woman. We cannot write or
paint our own histories in the first person. We cannot
describe our own lives without describing our interac-
tions with other people.
Many of us still see ourselves and gauge ourselves by
who we were in high school, what kind of athlete, what
group we hung with, what friends we made, what our sta-
tus was then. Those were the fornative years- 15, 16, 17,
and 18. And yet many of us ... still gauge ourselves
through that. Our human intercourse defines us much
more than our genetics. Our minds and our hearts are in-
evitably and inextricably entwined with those around us
who we either trust or we fear, we love, or admire, or fall
prey to. So it is with us, and so it is with Lee Malvo.
Children are not born evil, and when they commit evil
acts, you can almost always trace those acts to the influ-
ences and acts that have been perforned against them.
And almost always those are acts and influences that pre-
cede any transgression by that child. As are we all, Lee is
a product of his environment. Now, in the course of this
trial, I hope that you have been able to see and come to
know that Lee ws uniquely susceptible to becoming at-
tached to a father figure in the charismatic personage of
John Muhanmad. Lee's childhood was one of abandon-
ment-ripped from the father that lie loved, Leslie Malvo,
at age five-and-a-half to be moved and moved and moved
again. And by age 14, lie had attended 10 schools and had
alnost an uncountable number of caretakers. And unlike
some who have had frequent moves in schools ... and
moved around, Lee had no parent whatsoever. Some who
move around have the benefit of a guiding and loving par-
ent- not so with Lee. Lee's mother was abusive, and she
was absent, and she returned only to uproot him again and
again-to move him, to abuse him again, and then leave
again. She denied him a father, and every time he began to
fori a bond... Iwith a father figure], Una James severed
the tie and moved him again. And by the time she aban-
doned Lee in Antigua, where he had absolutely no family
base or support system, he was desperate for a father. He
was, in a phrase, ripe for the picking.
There's... a quote by Mother Teresa.... It says:
One of the worst diseases is to be nobody to nobody.
Lee saw John Muhammad and came to love in him,
not ai evil man, but a loving parent; a man who was good
to other children, a man who went out of his way to do
kind things for people. Lee did not attach himself to some
evil personage. Lee saw John Muhammad as a provider,
as a person who lavished attention on him for the first
CRIMINAL JUSTICE m Spring 2004 73
Robert E. Shepherd, Jr., is emeritus professor of law at the
University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia. He is also a
contributing editor to Crimina/Justice magazine and former
chair of the Section's Juvenile Justice Committee.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cjust19&div=17&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Malvo Closing Argument
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